So it's been a couple weeks, and we've all been working very hard on Hex and the surrounding area! Boz and Pete have done some excellent work animating each scene and the vault for Unreal, as well as Boz making this amazing model of the stairs that would lie between the Octagon and the conservatory.

Janey has done some more work on custom drawings, and has produced these replicas of the drawings inside the Vault, and they look great!

Code has spent some time modelling the entrance to Dark Forest, and helped make some bins for the area look more realistic.

I've been modelling the landscape for the entire Dark Forest/Cloud Cuckoo Land area and got quite far with a nice looking area shaping up.

Ben has been making some amazing theming elements, as well as the entrance signs to the AT resort, the queue fencing and scaffolding within the Octagon.

Dave has beautifully recreated the fallen branch that lies within the Vault, with chains to hold it down later added by Code.

This is all from us for now, things are beginning to come together really nicely so keep an eye on our page!

With the recent removal of Ripsaw, here’s our tribute. Detoxing survivors of Nemesis for 18 years, the giant device has stood in Forbidden Valley cutting it since 1997 and was only removed in 2015. We have fond memories of this ride, what about you?

This weekend, we're venturing into the Gothic Towers ruins themselves for a long night of mystery. We've been fortunate enough to book ourselves onto a ghost hunt evening on the 13th February, who knows what we'll find?

Hi everyone, I hope you're all ready for something new and exciting, because today I'm proud to present the FIRST LOOK at one of Alton Towers' roller coasters in the Unreal Engine!

Dave has spent hours upon hours working on the track for this fantastic coaster, and now we have an insight as to what its going to look like in the engine, so enjoy this video put together by us, featuring the new Galactica soundtrack put together by IMAscore! I'm excited by this development and can't wait to present future updates on the roller coasters and getting them into the game engine. We're all still learning this program, and every time something like this happens it's another step closer to realizing our goal.

A special video has gone on our channel today, the second in our blog style updates, featuring Pete and Dave talking about the latest progress in Unreal. With several unique pictures of the work on Galactica's track, and even the first ON RIDE FOOTAGE, this is a big turning point for us. There's 25 minutes here, so plenty of information for you, all about how we've done the trackwork and animations, the latest on Dave's work with trees, and the future plans. Any doubts that have ever been had should hopefully be put to bed with this video, alongside the second event that took place last week. Last Wednesday I joined Mike Sheets (nSeven to the NL2 community) on the NL2Cast to talk about Virtual Towers Online and the changes made since we made the move from NoLimits 2 to the Unreal Engine. This is a full hour long podcast, and clears up a lot of controversy surrounding the move we made.

Interesting stuff anyway! The team is putting so much effort into the project and it will definitely be worth it, can't wait to relax in the virtual park, will just need to remortgage to buy a VR headset

You did really well on the podcast, good to hear lots of detail on these big future plans! The host was a bit grating though.

Thank you, Mike was great fun to talk to, we managed to actually record about two hours of material so there was plenty of chat

I didn't post these earlier but these from directly from the Unreal Engine, some screenshots for those who don't have the patience to watch the whole video, of Galactica's track. Needless to say, it's looking astounding and it's going to look beautiful once the proper area gets created

We're getting closer and closer to our Hex demo release, we have all the main features scripted up and ready to go, we're now working on optimization and ensuring the best playing experience. This involves running the current package on multiple computers of varying performance capabilities to ensure that to play Virtual Towers you won't necessarily be required to run a beast gaming PC. Though for the very BEST experience, this is likely to be a necessity.

Ben has been reworking the inside of Hex and getting the queue line built and themed out, there's going to be plenty to look at in there!

Dave has been working hard with Speedtree and has created some beautiful foliage that we plan to use to populate the iconic landscape of the resort

Ben has also begun the interior detailing of a familiar restaurant, the Fried Chicken Co. in X-Sector!

And I have been taking my modelling skills to the next level by creating what's been described as an amazing model of the enormous Marmaliser theming element!

Please remember that everything you see is WIP and that the released game may not be as you see it. We want to give you the ultimate virtual Alton Towers experience and are sparing no detail in the process! See you in the next update, enjoy!

Yeah there's not been much going on lately because personally I've started a new job and moved house, and it's slowed my own work down, so we've not done too much, but we're still working on Hex, and it's almost ready for a demo release, it's looking fantastic! At this point I won't post anymore visual teasers for now, as we want some aspects of how it looks to remain a surprise for when people first download and play the game, but one thing I WILL mention, is that as of this week we have now built the graphics settings menu. So mega-powerful computer systems won't be necessary to play! Until the next update, see you later!

So a few days ago we posted on our Facebook page regarding where we are now and the FAQs, I thought it was necessary to share it here too:

"> RELEASE DATE: This is still not set, we were hoping the end of April, but we've encountered a number of sticking points in development and we don't want to release until it's ready. Be assured though, it's looking incredible and we can't wait to let you all start riding Hex again whilst the real one is closed.> WHAT IS IT? We're creating a virtual recreation of Alton Towers as visitable virtual world. This will be achieved using the Unreal game engine, and the long term goal will be to have it as an online multiplayer environment.> NO LIMITS: We are no longer working to do anything for No Limits coaster simulator, this is now going to be a standalone game, although wer are still using No Limits behind the scenes as a modeling tool.I'm afraid we do not have plans to release any previous content for No Limits as this has now been repurposed for use in the main game, and as such is something we want to keep to ourselves for now.> HEX DEMO FEATURES: The hex demo is going to be very much pre-aplha, this means there is going to be a number of features missing that we intend to have in the final version. We simply want people to be able to visit hex and enjoy the ride in all it's glory at this stage. A brief summary of the planned features that will be missing from this release are:- Ride Host mode - this will be in the next phase- Multiplayer support - currently this will be only single player and run locally on the user's machine. We will try to implement for phase 1, but it's likely it will be phase 2.- Core Guest mode mechanics / Staff Mode Level Progression - This will be implemented closer to full park completion- Oculus Rift (VR headset) Support - We're hoping for the next phase, but we need to get hold of one to test with first.- Limited park access - the rest of the park is nowhere near ready to be explored yet, we will be expanding the explorable area with each release phaseWHATS COMING AFTER HEX? We're really happy to announce that we have already started work on what we're calling "Phase 1". This will include the rest of the towers themselves, the lawns down to the lake in front of the towers, and... X SECTOR! including Oblivion, Enterprise and The Smiler! In addition we're hoping to have some sideshow games and basic use of the shops ready.We will also hopefully have an early version of Ride Host/ Operator mode ready to go, on all available rides, including an updated and improved version of HexThose are the main points, if I have any updates I will edit this post which will remain at the top of our FB page for the time being. If you have any questions that aren't covered, please comment and I will add to the list.Thanks to everyone for sticking with us, we hope to be bringing Alton Towers home to you soon."

Hi TRM, I can't possibly say whether our game is compatible with mac yet, as none of our team have a mac to test it. However! Big announcement!

This bank holiday, YOU can finally run the very first pre-alpha demo of Hex: The Legend of the Towers for yourself when on the 30th of May, we release to the public! This demo has been 8 months in the making and we're all extremely proud of what we've achieved, we hope you all love it when we release!

Here's a short trailer for the demo that's also on our Facebook page and soon the YouTube channel: Hex Pre-Alpha trailer